PS3 Sales Up After Price Cuts

So, you’re wondering how the new 40GB PS3 SKU is affecting sales? Has uptake increased or are the Xbox 360 and Wii still dominating the store front? Well, the good news for Sony is that according to the latest figures sales are indeed up, and by quite a margin, much to the delight of Sony CEO Howard Stringer, who called it “the breakthrough we’ve been anticipating” although he did admit that “we’ve been holding our breath”.

The actual figures have sales before the new models release at around 30 to 40,000 per week, while post-release figures were at 75,000 the week after launch and 100,000 the week after that. Obviously getting the new SKU out in the run up to Christmas will have helped and sales would probably have increased now anyway, but the boost will be appreciated by Sony whatever the reasons.

Current overall sales figures suggest Sony has shipped about five million PlayStation 3s since its launch last year (March here in the UK), rather less than the 9.3 million Wiis and 11.6 million Xbox 360s. As Stringer remarked though: “It’s a little fortuitous that the Wii is running out of hardware”.

Many people after a Nintendo console this Christmas may find themselves disappointed and inevitably some of them will end up grabbing a PS3 or Xbox instead, or at least that’s the theory. In any case, this is proof that there’s still life in the PlayStation 3 yet, especially with games such as Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Little Big Planet finally starting to emerge.